Is This the End of the Worlds?

C.S. Lewis dedicated his classic fantasy novel “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” to his godchild, Lucy Barfield, but apologized for the fact that she was already too old for fairy tales. “I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books,” Lewis wrote.

Fantasy is long, hard work. God took six days to create the earth, but writers often spend decades building fantasy worlds and years more detailing and expanding them.

L. Frank Baum published “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900 and continued exploring the world of Oz in books until his death in 1919. George R.R. Martin began “A Game of Thrones,” the first volume of his “A Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy series, in 1991, published it in 1996, and today, more than twenty years after he started, he is still two books away from finishing the seven-book saga.

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